


Guerrilla Warfare

by exiteditor



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27455944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exiteditor/pseuds/exiteditor
Summary: After 3x07, Lexa survives, barely, but they find themselves in the middle of a brewing war between Arkadia and the grounders.  Along with Murphy and Niylah, the four engage in a guerrilla war keeping all sides at bay long enough for Lexa to retake her throne from the new Commander.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	1. Panic

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything. I'm just a guy with a lot of creative energy to vent, and I thought that this might be an okay place to vent it.

My feet felt like they’d suddenly been immersed in quicksand. Moments ago, adrenaline coursing through every vein in my body, I’d ducked away as Titus opened fire from barely ten feet away, practically dancing as the self-preservation instinct twisted my body out of the path of the bullet. Now it seemed as though, no matter how much my brain commanded my feet to move, they refused to shift with even a fraction of the nimbleness they’d shown only seconds before.

The shocked expression was frozen on Lexa’s face as she clutched her midsection, black blood flowing between her fingers as she dropped to her knees, then rolled, almost lazily, over to her side.

“Heda,” Titus’s voice was almost dazed, as if he couldn’t quite process what was happening either.

An automatic denial was ripped from my throat as I saw her drop and my feet _finally_ listened and drove me to her side.

“Help me get her to the bed,” I commanded.

Titus said something, I don’t know exactly what, but he was helping me, which was good enough. Jesus, there was blood everywhere. Operating on instinct, I tore her shirt opened, trying to visualize the wound. Black blood poured out of her abdomen and onto the bed.

 _Pouring, not pumping_. My brain dutifully announced. Indeed, black blood was flowing steadily from the wound, without pulsing from it. Small favors. It looked like it was a bad bleed, but not an arterial one. If it were, she’d already be dead. You could bleed dry from the abdominal aorta in seconds.

“I need something to stop the bleeding,” I could hear panic creeping into my voice, and I tried desperately to squash it down. “You’re going to be okay,” I turned back to the woman lying prone, trying desperately to focus through the pain, “Just lie still, okay? I need you to lie still.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Lexa’s voice was barely above a whisper.

 _God damn it._ I couldn’t see the wound clearly. Blood was everywhere, and more was pouring out every second. She was right. I was afraid.

I quickly scanned around. _The human body can lose between 2.4 and 4 liters of blood before it becomes life-threatening_ , for reasons that I'm at a loss to explain, Pike’s voice from Earth Skills class echoed back at me. There was an irony for you. There wasn’t anywhere near that much on the ground. I had time, but not much. “Murphy, I need Aiden and there’s a field kit in my chamber. If I can slow down the bleeding enough, we’re going to need someone to put it back in. You have five minutes, maybe a little more.” I thought for a moment, “I saw him in the throne room earlier, he can’t have gone far.”

Murphy disappeared. We didn’t get along, but he wasn’t exactly about to let Lexa die if there was something he could do about it. Knowing him, he was probably playing some angle. Considering how I’d found him, it couldn’t hurt for him to foster a little goodwill with Titus. The med kit I had with me had everything I needed to do a field transfusion, but she needed a nightblood donor, and I didn’t qualify.

“Forgive me, Heda,” Titus’s voice whispered.

“Titus, either help or back off,” I said sharply.

Lexa said something in Trig, but it barely registered. My mind was in no state to do the translation on the fly. Something about him not harming me.

“Hey, Heda, don’t you give up on me,” I threatened.

“I’m not. I told you. My spirit will live on.” She sounded desperately tired, as if she were struggling to remain conscious.

“No,” I shook my head in vehement denial. “I told _you_ , I need your spirit right where it is.”

 _God damn it_. She needed a surgical suite, or at least a doctor, and there was one less than a day’s ride in Arcadia, but it may as well have been on the moon. She would bleed out before we got out of the building, much less across grounder territory to the station. If I could just stop the bleeding, or even slow it down to a trickle…

_Why are you hiding from your own people?_

_Why’d you run away from yours?_

It’s weird what pops into your mind when you’re in a blind panic. It seemed like months ago that Roan had me tied up in that subway station waiting for the Ice Nation army to pass by.

The wound in his abdomen had been almost exactly where Lexa’s was now…

“Titus, hold this,” I yelled at him. He was muttering some words over her now, but I didn’t care. Her life was flowing out of her, and I wasn’t about to let him give last rights until her body was good and cold. He’d unfolded some kind of surgical kit on the bed. I could see a scalpel, some forceps, a few rudimentary surgical tools that looked as though they’d seen better days. They could come in useful later, but now I had more pressing concerns. “Titus, dammit, hold this and push hard,” I guided his hand to the makeshift gauze pad I was holding over her wound.

I quickly rushed away to a flaming cauldron that stood by the doorway. A hot iron poker sat, its end in the flame, and its end glowing a bright cherry red as I removed it. That’ll do.

“Titus, out of the way,” I ordered as I came back.

“There’s nothing you can do now. The next commander will protect you,” Lexa whispered.

“Maybe they will,” I muttered, “but not today.” I turned to Titus, “hold her down.” I turned back to Lexa, God she was pale, “Lexa, I need you to brace yourself, ‘cause this is _really_ going to hurt.” Without waiting for her to ask, I shoved the hot end of the poker into her wound. Lexa screamed and her back arched as the sickening, sweet smell of burning flesh rose around us. I mentally begged whatever powers were watching to show a little consideration as I pulled the metal rod free, and watched as blood refilled the blistered hole it had so recently occupied.

Very slowly.

I quickly grabbed Lexa’s hand, and placed my fingers on the pulse point at her wrist. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. Whatever inhuman torture I’d just inflicted on her, combined with the blood loss and bullet wound, had caused her to lose consciousness. Lexa was far and away the toughest, most resilient human being I’d ever met, but she had her limits.

Her pulse was there. Not strong, but it was steady. Her breathing was shallow and fast, and a sheen of sweat covered her pale face. She was going into shock.

For the first time in what seemed like eons, I let myself take a full breath. She wasn’t out of the woods, but at least she wasn’t in any immediate danger of bleeding out. There was no way of knowing how much damage the bullet had done, but it should be possible to transport her, if we were careful.

Titus had gone back to chanting over her. 

“Back off, Titus, she’s not dying today,” I belted at him. _At least, not yet_ , I didn’t add. Shock, on its own, could be fatal once it set in, but that wasn’t the highest priority. We had to get her out of here, and get her some real medical attention.

Murphy appeared at the door, clearly out of breath. “Found him,” he commented, gesturing at the young blond teenager next to him. I almost collapsed with relief. My focus was so frazzled that I could barely choke out the Trig phrase “ _beja sis me au, sis yu heda au_ ,” please help me help your commander. I’ll never know if he understood what I was asking of him, but he clearly heard the desperation in my voice and knew not to ask too many questions that I didn’t have answers to.

I reached for his arm, opening the med kit as I did so and unwinding the transfusion kit, and tying the tourniquet around his upper bicep. Immediately, a vein presented itself in the crook of his elbow and I inserted the 16-gauge needle into it. I watched as the black blood flowed into the plastic tubing, then inserted the opposite end into a vein in Lexa’s arm. Fortunately, she hadn’t lost enough blood for them to collapse. Yet.

I could only guess at how much she needed. That was the hard part, getting enough blood from Aden that Lexa would be stable enough to move, but not so much that Aden would be in danger. So I kept my finger on her pulse and waited for it to strengthen. I quickly pulled off her left boot and checked that the I could still detect a pulse at her foot. Finally, I dragged my thumbnail up the sole of her foot and watched as her toes curled downward. Whatever the bullet had done, it didn’t seem to have compromised circulation, or any of the nervous connections to the lower extremities.

I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. The surge of adrenaline subsided, and I felt my hands start to shake uncontrollably. She wasn’t safe, not yet, but she was stable enough that I could get her to some real medical help.

“What have you done?” Titus demanded.

“I saved her life,” I countered. _For now_ , I didn’t add.

“You have only delayed the inevitable,” he insisted. “Once word of her condition becomes known, she will be in no state to counter a challenge.”

“So we’ll take her to Arkadia. She’ll be safe there, and nobody would dare attack while she’s being treated there.”

Titus shook his head. “My people will see that as a kidnapping by the clan she just blockaded. It would be an onslaught. Both you, and she would be safer if she were dead.”

Shit. He was right. She would be no safer at Aarkadia than she would be if I'd allowed her to bleed out here. “So we let her die,” I said.

“You have already saved her life,” Titus said sadly.

“But nobody outside of this room knows that,” I answered. “What happens when a commander dies?”

“The conclave is held to determine the new Heda, and the spirit is transferred to them,” Titus said.

“Trikru burns the bodies of their dead. Can you keep this secret until you burn… something in her place?” I asked.

“I don’t under-…”

“ _Can you do it?_ ” I demanded.

“Yes, but…”

“Good. Then do it.” I ordered. I turned to Aden. “Aden, can you keep what you saw here today a secret?”

He looked over at the unconscious Lexa, and nodded, “I will.”

“You know what this means, right?” I asked him. “There will be a conclave. You will have to fight, and you may lose.”

“If it is Heda’s will that I die in the conclave, then I will keep her secret with my last breath,” he said, firmly.

“I do not understand,” Titus spoke up. “You save the commander only to have her spirit pass on to another?”

“No, you don’t understand,” I shook my head sadly in agreement. “I was never saving the commander. Will you help me save _Leksa Kom Trikru_?”

He held my gaze for a moment. “This is weakness,” he shook his head.

“So be it. Will you help me?” I asked again.

“I was fleimkepa for five commanders, I will be fleimkepa for a sixth,” he nodded.

“Okay, what do we do?” I asked.

“Help me roll her onto her side,” he ordered.

“Careful, she could still bleed out,” I told him.

His head bobbed forward as he helped me roll Lexa’s limp form onto her left side. He reached for the scalpel from the medical kit he’d unrolled only moments earlier. For the first time, I saw the exit wound, just above her hip bone on her left side. It was bleeding, but not badly. I could pack that wound and have her mobile. It was a through-and-through. She had a real shot at recovery if it didn’t hit anything vital.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I demanded. Of its own accord, my hand darted out to grab his wrist.

He held up a hand to calm me down. “You must trust me. I would never harm _Leksa Kom Trikru_.”

I felt that the gunshot wound in her abdomen was a pretty strong argument against that, but, to be fair, he had been trying to hit me at the time. And in his own way, I guess he was trying to protect Lexa.

“I must do this,” he added, sensing my apprehension, “and you must let me. If she could, she would tell you herself.”

Hearing Lexa’s words, almost verbatim, quoted at me shocked me into obedience. He slid her dark hair aside, revealing a figure-eight on its side tattooed on the back of her neck. The long-held symbol for infinity. With a practiced ease, he made a small incision, only a couple of inches long, across the symbol. He whispered a phrase. It sounded like Latin, but I have no clue what it meant.

At his words, a small crystal slid free from the back of her neck, retracting tiny delicate tendrils as it did so.

“What the hell?” I’d almost forgotten that Murphy was there as I watched, almost transfixed by what I’d thought only moments ago was some kind of religious ritual.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s an A.I.” Murphy realized first. Although how he realized that, I’m not sure I know.

Titus shook his head as he carefully cleaned the device and slid it into a metal box. “No, it is the spirit of the commanders.”

When Lexa woke up, _that_ was going to be a conversation.

“You can disappear under cover of darkness,” Titus announced. “I will take care of the rest.”

“Murphy, do you think you can sneak my mom out of Arkadia?”

“I thought the plan was to sneak her _in_ ,” he nodded at Lexa.

I shook my head, “no, Titus was right about that. If word gets out that Lexa is alive and at Arkadia, they’ll demolish the entire town trying to get her back. All of Skaikru and a lot of the coalition will die. I need to get her somewhere where we can operate, but nobody will think to look for her.”

“And what do you want me to do?” He asked.

“Meet me there,” I said.

-x-

The door of the trading post swung open to Niyla’s very confused face. To her credit, she took in my disheveled look, blood-soaked clothing, and tangled hair with relatively little comment.

“Now I’ve been taken by the mountain,” I told her, “will you help me?”


	2. Respite

Niylah pulled back as realization crossed her face. “ _Wanheda_ ,” her voice reflected the surprise, “you should not be here.”

“I know. Neither should she,” I nodded in the direction of the makeshift travois I’d been dragging behind me most of the night. I’d bandaged Lexa up as well as I could and secured her body on it. Still nearly every bump along the way had me stopping to check if her wounds had reopened. The cover of darkness had allowed us to sneak out of Polis and to Niylah’s outpost without being seen, but now we needed a safe harbor. I pulled the travois into the dimly lit outpost, so that she could see its passenger.

“Is that…”

“Yes,” I interrupted her. “I need to know right now, Niylah. Will we be safe here? If not, I need to find another place.”

“But she’s dead. The conclave has already been called,” she insisted.

I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the fact that news had already reached her, and that it was pure luck that I hadn’t happened on the messenger in the darkness, or worse, showed up at her doorstep while they were still here. “The conclave has been called, but she’s not dead, and as of this moment you’re one of only five people who know that,” I nodded at Lexa, “six, if she wakes up.” I met her eyes, “I need an answer, Niylah.”

Niylah gave a short nod of her head, “bring her to the back. She won’t be seen there, and she can rest.” Her eyes quickly traveled the length of my body, taking in my appearance, “you look that you could use some rest as well.”

It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I’d been running steadily for over thirty-six hours, and with an abruptness that shocked me, fatigue suddenly seemed to take over every muscle in my body. Even with Niylah’s help, I barely managed to lift Lexa’s slender frame onto the bed. Her breathing was slow and steady, and I let myself focus on that. As long as she was still breathing, she was still with me.

Niylah scanned Lexa’s wounds. “That… wasn’t a cat,” she looked up at me.

I shook my head, “no. Gunshot.” I could barely speak in full sentences anymore.

“Skaikru?” She asked.

“No, but her advisor wanted it to look that way,” there was no point in hiding it from her. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Her advisor wanted her dead?” Niylah’s confusion showed.

I shook my head. “He wanted me dead, and he wanted it to look like Skaikru had done it. He missed, she took one of the bullets that was meant for me.” I sat down on the edge of the bed and almost reflexively reached to hold Lexa’s hand in my own. “He was hoping Lexa would dissolve the thirteenth clan and declare war.”

“Over Skaikru killing one of their own? Why would she…” her voice trailed off as she looked down at Lexa’s hand clasped in both of mine. “Oh.”

I followed her eyes down to where my fingers gently stroked the back of Lexa’s hand. _Shit._ A blanket of silence fell over the small room, interrupted only by Lexa’s slow, steady breathing.

“I have to watch the store,” Niylah finally broke the awkward silence, and left – or perhaps fled – the small room.

“Niylah, wait,” I raced after her.

She spun around to face me, “Clark, I know we never talked about what _this_ is,” she gestured between us.

“I know, and I’m…”

“ _Dula yu op hod em in [do you love her]?”_ She interrupted me. When Niylah was upset or… excited, she tended to revert to her native Trigedasleng.

“ _Sha_ ,” I said finally, after a long pause, there was no point in hiding it. Not from her. She knew me well enough that she would know if I was lying. “I didn’t…” I took a deep breath, “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

“ _Dula em op hod yu in? [does she love you?]_ ” She pressed, clearly hoping otherwise.

That was a good question. “ _Ai hofli em hod ai in. [I hope so.]_ ” It was the most honest answer I had, at least until Lexa woke up.

I’d hurt her. I knew I would, but Niylah didn’t deserve a lie. Not after everything she’d done for me. She took a step forward, taking one of my hands in hers, “ _hodnes laik kwelnes. Ai na ste kwelen. Em nou na. [Love is weakness. I'm allowed to be weak. She is not.]”_ Tears hung in her eyes, but a fierce strength burned behind them, stubbornly refusing to let them fall. 

“Niylah…”

She took a slow, shaking breath and steadied herself, “you should get some sleep. You’re exhausted.”

“Murphy will be back soon,” I shook my head.

“I will wake you when he comes,” she countered. She smiled, sadly before she nodded in the direction of the bedchamber, “she needs you.”

-x-

I woke from a dreamless sleep to Niylah gently shaking me awake. I’d fallen asleep on the bed next to Lexa after checking her bandages again. The bleeding was down to a modest trickle. Enough that she’d have to have the dressing replaced regularly, but no so much that she was in any danger from blood loss.

“Murphy is back,” Niylah whispered.

“Mom?” I sat up.

“No,” Murphy appeared at the doorway, “But I got the next best thing.” He shrugged out of his bag. “Antibiotics, anaesthetics, enough sutures to stitch two horses together, basic surgical tools, and this,” he produced a small handheld radio. “Your mom’s expecting your call. She’s listening on a frequency that Pike’s people don’t use.”

“Why didn’t she come herself?” I asked.

“Things have gone to hell at Arkadia. Pike has anyone who is or ever has spoken against him locked up. Octavia is on the run… somewhere,” he summarized, “Jaha has basically decided that he’s the savior of all mankind and people are lining up to agree with him. All the walls have eyes and ears, and someone like your mom would be missed if she disappeared.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Me?” Murphy let out a wry laugh, “they didn’t even notice that I was there, much less gone.”

I gave my head a shake to clear it. Those were all things I would have to deal with, but they could wait. Highest priority was Lexa.

“Niylah,” I turned to her, “I need some boiling water to sterilize these tools.”

“Does she know who we’re treating here?” I turned back to Murphy.

“No, and I didn’t tell her,” Murphy replied. “I figured ‘plausible deniability’ was the order of the day.”

“Good call,” I told him, “from here out, we keep the circle as small as possible. The fewer the people who know that Lexa is still alive, the safer she is.”

I keyed the radio and set the microphone to voice activation, then laid it on the bed next to Lexa.

“Mom?”

“Clarke, thank God, are you okay? Where are you?” Mom’s voice sounded tinny coming through the speaker.

“I’m fine, mom, and I’m not going to tell you where I am. If someone asks, you don’t have to lie,” I told her. “I need your help.”

“Tell me what you need,” her voice replied.

“Female…” it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know how old Lexa was, so I gave my best guess, “early twenties. Gunshot to lower left quadrant. Exit wound in the back above the left ilium. Appears to be a through-and-through. Wound was cauterized on site with hot rebar.”

“Seriously?” Mom sounded impressed.

I shrugged before I realized that she couldn’t actually see me. “Yeah. It was all I could think of.”

“Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I imagine it probably saved her life,” she replied. “How badly is she bleeding?”

“Worse than I’d like, but it’s manageable. No immediate danger of exsanguination,” I replied.

“Okay, you’re going to need to go in and take out any dead tissue, then work your way back out, stitching everything up as you work your way out. She’s going to need a bucketload of antibiotics once you’re done, but if it’s a through-and-through, I should be able to walk you through it.”

“Okay, what do I do first?”

“Sterilize a ten-blade and let me know when you’re ready,” she ordered me, “and make yourself comfortable, this is going to take a while.”

* * *

I let out a long breath as I tied the last suture. After six hours holding a scalpel, my hands were cramped, and barely steady. Niylah had played nurse for the entire time even though she must have been exhausted herself. As I thought back to the way she’d cleaned and dressed my wounds the night we’d spent together, it occurred to me that her trading post must spend a fair amount of time doubling as an emergency medical clinic to those who were willing to trade for care. She was probably a pretty decent bonesetter.

“How do the sutures look?” My mom’s voice called out again.

“Not my best work, but they’ll hold. She’ll have a nasty scar when all this is done, but the bleeding seems to have stopped.”

“Good. Hang a bag of cefoxitin, and keep it coming. I sent three IV bags with Murphy. Use them all. When she wakes up, I sent you some neomycin pills. Keep her on those until she runs out. Check her pulse and breathing.”

“Pulse at 54 beats per minute and strong. Breathing at 15 breaths per minute.” I put my ear to her chest. “Breath sounds normal.”

“That’s good. Keep watching her to see if that changes, but it sounds like she’s going to be okay,” Mom told me.

“Can I reach you on this frequency?” I asked.

“Only in emergencies. Has Murphy brought you up to speed on what’s going on here?”

“Mostly. Are you okay?”

“No. But Pike needs a doctor on staff, and for now, we don’t have many,” she told me, “I’ll be fine.”

“Good. We need to come up with a plan on our end, but for now, the less you know about where I am and what I’m doing, the better,” I told her.

“Don’t do anything dangerous,” she cautioned.

“I don’t think I’ll have much choice on that one, if history is any indicator,” I told her.

“Well, then don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t. Head and heart,” I replied.

* * *

The sun was just barely over the horizon when Lexa’s eyes fluttered open. She took in a couple of sharp breaths, and groaned as she aggravated her wounds.

“Shhh,” I rushed to her side and took her hand. “It’s okay. You’re safe,” I unconsciously mimicked her words from so long ago.

“ _Klark_ ,” a small smile appeared on her face as she visibly relaxed. “I’m not… dead?”

“No, but you gave it your best shot,” I reached up to gently brush a stray hair from her forehead, “ _beja nou dula daun gon Ai nodotaim [Please don't do that to me again],”_ I said gently.

“I will try,” she replied, matching my gentle tone.

“What happened?” Her eyes finally seemed to focus enough to take in her surroundings, “where am I?”

She closed her eyes, almost meditatively for a moment before they snapped open. A look of panic spread across her face “What’s wrong? _Ai no nou sen heda in [I can't hear the commanders]._ ”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” I tried to calm her down.

“I can’t hear the commanders,” she repeated. “I’ve lost the commanders.” It was about the closest to tears I’d ever seen her, and I’d seen her talk about the beheading of the love of her life. I’d seen her impale one of her closest friends and confidants. I’d seen her mourn, in her way, the deaths of hundreds in TonDC, yet none of them seemed to affect her the way the sudden silencing of the voices in her mind had.

“It’s okay,” I whispered.

“It’s not,” a panic was starting to set in, “I can’t hear their voices.”

“Then hear mine,” I cupped her face in my hands. “ _Sen ai bouz op [hear my voice]._ ”

She seemed to relax, but only slightly. “Why did you do this to me?” She demanded.

“I did it to save your life,” I told her. “You’re safe.”

“The next commander…”

I shook my head, “I wasn’t saving the commander’s life. I was saving yours.”

“Do you even know what you’ve done, _Klark_?” She demanded, “as we speak, each of my novitiates is fighting to the death until only one remains. By saving one life, you’ve killed eight others.”

“That would have happened anyway,” I countered. “If I’d done nothing, you would have died, and your novitiates would _still_ be fighting to the death. I had a lot of very bad options, and no time to make a decision. At least this way, I get to keep someone I lo— someone I care about.” I let myself put on a wry smile, “you want to know why I saved you? Because I need you.” I heard voices from the front room of the trading post. I ignored them. Niylah would keep whoever it was from coming back here.

“ _Hodness nou laik kwelnes_ ,” she said softly. “You were right.”

“Clarke,” Niylah stepped into the room. “There’s been a development.”

“What happened?”

“That was a messenger. The conclave is over, a new commander has been chosen,” Niylah replied.

“We expected that,” I told her. That seemed quick, though. Lexa talked of her conclave as if it were something that could last days, and take several sessions.

“There’s more. _Kongeda_ is marching on Arkadia. They’ve declared war on _Skaikru_ ,” Niylah continued.

I shook my head, “I don’t understand, Aden promised…”

“Aden is dead, Clark,” behind her, even Murphy winced at the bluntness of the statement. “Aden, the novitiates, they all lost the conclave.”

“So, who is…” my question trailed off as a cold realization crept into my chest and squeezed until I could barely breathe, “Ontari.”

She nodded, “her first act after her ascension was confirmed was to dissolve _Skaikru_ ’s position on the coalition and declare war.”

“I was sure… my spirit would choose more wisely than that,” Lexa spoke weakly from the bed.

“Lexa… I’m…” Lexa held up a hand to silence me. She wasn’t commander anymore, but old habits die hard, I guess. “You should be resting,” I said lamely.

She ignored my comment and turned to Niylah, “did my novitiates die well?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

Lexa nodded, accepting the answer for what it was: the truth. “A new commander has risen. If it is her decision that we march on Arkadia, then we must honor that wisdom.”

“It will be a slaughter on both sides,” I told her. “ _Skaikru_ will be exterminated, and thousands of _Kongeda_ will die. I can’t accept that this is ancient wisdom.”

“We must,” she replied, “she is the commander.”

“She’s not my commander,” I told her, “we’ve been thrown out.”

“She’s mine,” Lexa countered.

“ _Yu gonplei ste odon_. Do the dead have commanders?” I asked.

Lexa opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, her eyebrows arching slightly. Apparently, her current condition was an eventuality she hadn’t considered, and it made her position relative to the new commander somewhat unclear.

“Surely there must be some way she can be deposed,” I insisted. “If she’s removed, you’re the only remaining nightblood, right?”

Lexa hesitated a moment before she replied, “yes, the only one.”

“So you weren’t the first commander, how were the others replaced?” I asked.

“Almost all were killed in battle, some were killed in a single combat challenge,” she said. “To my knowledge, I’m the only one to have stepped down alive from her position.”

“Single combat, like the ice queen tried to do to replace you,” I pressed.

Lexa’s head bobbed forward. “Any warrior may challenge the commander. If she loses, then a new conclave is called.”

“So you challenge Ontari,” I said. “You win, you’re the only nightblood left, so the conclave will be _really_ short.”

“It is not that simple,” Lexa shook her head. “I would never allow someone to fight on my behalf, but Ontari has no such qualms. She would allow a devoted follower to kill the challenger before they’d finished uttering a challenge, and right now, she has the loyalty of all the _krus_. We would never get close enough to issue a challenge, much less survive one.”

“But if you could, can you beat Ontari?” I asked.

“Once I recover my strength? Yes,” Lexa assured me, “but I wouldn’t be fighting Ontari.”

The confusion on my face must have showed.

“Ontari now possesses all the memories, knowledge, wisdom, and instincts of all the commanders that preceded her,” she smiled wryly, “including me.”

“And you don’t,” I realized. “But Roan knew that, and challenged you. He almost won, and you said that previous commanders had been killed in single combat,” I reminded her.

She nodded, “but whatever was done to kill them, I can assure you, would not have worked on the next commander. If Roan had killed me, the next commander would have beaten him easily.” She shrugged again, “as I said, everything I learned, every fight I fought, every attack I landed, as well as those of every other commander, she has all of them now. She would be outmatched, this is true,” Lexa agreed, “but I would be outnumbered.”

“Okay. That’s problem number two. Problem number one: how do we get Lexa close enough to issue the challenge? She’s right, for better or worse, Ontari has the loyalty of all of the clans. How do we break that?” I asked.

“What if she started losing?” Murphy asked. At our confused glances he went on, “she only has the loyalty of her troops because they believe that the commanders are speaking to her and guiding her, right?”

“Go on,” Lexa commanded. Old habits die hard.

“What if we can make it look like she’s being outmaneuvered? This trading post will be behind their lines. From here, we can make it look like she’s being attacked by Skaikru where she didn’t anticipate it. We can hassle their supply lines. We can cut off roads and footpaths they use to keep the front lines fed and healthy,” he continued. “We do it right, we can convince them that she doesn’t have the help of the past commanders, maybe even that she’s not the true commander after all. If we’re _really_ lucky, someone may challenge her and win before we have to.”

“Many warriors will die,” Lexa pointed out.

“How many will die if we allow war between the coalition and _Skaikru_?” I asked. “Yes, you may, and probably will, exterminate _Skaikru_ , but you will lose hundreds – perhaps thousands – of warriors in the battle.” I turned to Murphy, “What about Pike? What’s stopping him from taking advantage of the situation to kill even more warriors?”

“We do the same to him,” Murphy shrugged, “play both sides against the middle.”

“A lot of _Skaikru_ will die,” I told him. “Are you comfortable with killing some of our own people?”

“We kill some of them, or we watch on the sidelines as the coalition kills all of them,” Murphy shrugged, “that strikes me as a pretty clear decision.”

“So, let me get this straight,” I said, “you’re proposing that the three of us…”

“Four,” Niylah interjected.

“Niylah, this isn’t your fight,” I told her. “You’re safe here.”

“It became my fight when Pike killed my family,” Niylah answered. “If I can keep some families alive, I want to help.”

“So the four of us are going to stand in the middle of the coalition, Skaikru, and whatever the hell is pulling Jaha’s strings, and try to convince all of them that they’re getting their asses kicked,” I summarized. “Is that about right? A guerilla war on three fronts?”

“You have a better idea?” Murphy asked with a shrug.

I have to admit, he had me there. “Well, then I guess we’d better get started, hadn’t we?”


	3. Planning

Chapter 3:

“So, who do we go after first?” Murphy asked.

“Does Pike know that _Kongeda_ is on the march?” Lexa asked.

“Not yet. They've withdrawn to Arkadia,” Murphy replied.

“How do you declare war, anyway?” I asked.

Lexa smiled wryly, “usually with one or two well-placed arrows. Possibly a spear or two.”

“So what would be Pike's first indication that he was facing your army?” I asked.

“Likely the same yours was. Torches on the hillside at night,” Lexa replied.

“They won't march fast,” I thought aloud. I glanced over at Lexa who nodded her agreement. “They'll want to conserve their strength for the battle. How long did it take you to march your army from Polis to Arkadia?”

“Four days, but we had no intention of engaging in a prolonged battle at Arkadia, or even a potential siege,” Lexa added. “The commanders suggested that a mere show of force could force you to surrender Fi—” she broke off as she saw the dark expression on my face. “I'm sorry,” she apologized quickly before shifting the focus of her explanation, “Ontari already knows that Pike has slaughtered an entire army. The Commanders will propose some caution, and that she be prepared for a prolonged battle upon arrival.”

“Six days?” I asked.

“Perhaps slightly more: Ontari will be marching with a much larger army than I was,” Lexa replied. “She will send advance scouts ahead, however. We can anticipate them tracing the path the main army will take the next day.”

I nodded, deep in thought. “That could work for us. If we're able to avoid detection by them, it would help us plan the ambush, and if her scouts report the all-clear in a mountain pass where she gets hit, and hit hard, it would look as if she was outmaneuvered that much worse.”

“Yes,” Lexa agreed. “It will certainly look that way to them.”

“You had the commanders in your head for years. What would they advise Ontari to do under those circumstances?”

Lexa's brow furrowed. “It will depend on who she listens to. Some of the commanders will be more… tempered in their response than others.”

“Will it slow her down at least?”

Lexa nodded, “she may stop and adopt a defensive stance, allowing the attackers to come to them, or she may send patrols out to destroy the army she believes ambushed her. In either case, their advance will stop for a time, and if we're successful in producing the illusion that Pike staged a surprise attack, they will move more slowly and cautiously.”

“Buying us even more time to deal with Pike,” Murphy said.

I nodded, “and Pike doesn't know any of that. As far as he knows, _Kongeda_ has plans to enforce a blockade with a kill order,” I continued my train of thought.

“What are you thinking?” Niylah asked.

“I'm thinking we use that,” I said. “As far as he knows, he would be challenging a blockade. He'll be sending regular patrols out just to test it. If we make sure that some of his patrols don't make it back, he'll start noticing. I want him thinking that a grounder could be hiding behind every tree and rock between here and Polis, and Ontari thinking pike is waiting around the next bend. If we do this right, _Kongeda_ will slow to a crawl, and _Skaikru_ won't venture too far out of Arkadia. We could buy ourselves just an extra few days where they're not killing each other, but they think that they are.”

“ _Klark,_ ” Lexa spoke up. “Pike thinks that a kill order is in place. You understand what that means.”

“What is she talking about?” Murphy asked.

I took a deep breath. “It means that we have to shoot to kill for the illusion to work. It means that everybody in any patrol we intercept either needs to be dead, or make it back to Arkadia believing that the _Kongeda_ army was trying to kill them.” I looked around at the three faces around me, “we'll do our best to keep the body count as low as possible, but let's be clear on this: it won't be zero, on either side. Some of our people, _Skaikru_ and _Kongeda_ , are going to die, and we're going to be the ones who kill a lot of them. If you have a problem with that, now is the time to let me know. If you have a better plan, one that won't kill anyone, now would be the time to bring that to my attention too.”

I looked around at the others. Their faces were somber, but resolved. Nobody raised an objection.

“Niylah,” I turned to her. “We need to make it look like _Kongeda_ is attacking Arkadia, and that _Skaikru_ is attacking _Kongeda_. That means guns and bullets on one side, bows and blades on the other.”

“Bows and blades are easy,” Niylah assured me, “We always have those available to trade. As for guns and bullets, a man came to trade some weapons he stole from Mount Weather shortly after the mountain fell,” she shrugged, “I don't keep them in the front room.”

“Murphy, how's your Trigedasleng?” I asked him.

“Not good enough to convince a native speaker, but good enough to get by,” he said.

“Work on it,” I told him, “when we're attacking Arkadia, it would be a pretty big tip-off if we all started speaking fluent English. There aren't that many Arkadians who are fluent, so the odds are any one of them we meet probably won't understand what we're saying.” I remembered learning about Navajo code talkers during World War II. It was supposedly the only code never broken during the war. It's not that I expected it to produce as much of a challenge for the Arkadians, but being able to shout directions and commands where anybody could hear them, but only the intended recipient could immediately understand them, could be a tactical advantage in itself.

“ _Fostaim oso hod op Kongeda fous. Den oso get Pike daun. [First we stop the Kongeda army, then we scare Pike]_ ,” I looked around for agreement.

“Not to be the wet blanket,” Murphy spoke up, “and don't get me wrong, I'm on board with the big picture here, but how are the four of us going to stop the entire Polis army?”

“Thermopylae,” I replied with a smile. “I hunted these woods for months. There are at least a half-dozen mountain passes that they will have to march through between Polis and Arkadia. None of them are particularly narrow, but narrow enough that an army that size will have to crowd closer together, or add at least a week onto their march while they go around or over the mountains on either side.”

Lexa nodded. “They will be careful in those passes, but they will also be trying to move quickly because they do not believe that Pike knows of their imminent attack. A small group will likely escape their notice.”

“Niylah?” I turned to the blonde woman.

She looked up to meet my eyes and gave a silent nod of acknowledgment.

“We won't need them yet, but what about horses? Sooner or later, we're going to be traveling back and forth between Arkadia and Polis a lot, and it's unlikely that we'll manage it on foot.”

“We have some,” Niylah replied. “Fast enough to make the round trip overnight.”

“We'll also need some grounder clothing,” I nodded at Murphy's clearly Arkadian garb in particular. “We don't have any quarrel with any of the grounders hunting or gathering in these woods, and if we look like we're just passing through, they should ignore us.” I looked over at Lexa, “I think also it goes without saying that we'll have to hide your face somehow.”

Lexa nodded her agreement, “yes. Even those who have never met me are likely to recognize my face. But it is not just me who needs this protection, _Wanheda_.” She emphasized my title.

 _Shit._ She was right. Lexa was a threat, to be sure, but she wasn't really a threat to Ontari until the loyalty of her followers was broken. As far as her followers knew, Lexa was already dead, and while it would definitely be bad if she were ever captured, or worse, killed, I was _Wanheda._ And the power of _Wanheda_ in Ontari's hands was truly the nightmare scenario. She would command such fanatical loyalty that she would be unstoppable. On her orders, her warriors would not hesitate to throw their lives away in a suicidal assault on Arkadia if it meant that they could bring victory to their commander. There's no defense against that kind of fanaticism. I mentally cursed myself for not realizing it sooner. I was so focused on keeping Lexa alive long enough to reclaim her throne, I'd completely overlooked how valuable I would be if I were dead, captured, or both.

“You're right,” I admitted. “Whatever happens, we can't let Ontari have the power of _Wanheda_.” I paused, looking at Lexa, “you understand what that means.”

Lexa nodded, her lips a tight, thin line.

“Now what are you talking about?” Murphy asked.

Now it was Lexa's turn to explain. “She means that whatever happens now, we cannot allow _Klark_ to fall into enemy hands,” she said, “our highest priority should be to prevent her from being brought before the commander as a prize. She means that if we must, we should kill her ourselves to prevent Ontari from claiming the power of _Wanheda_.”

“No,” Niylah shook her head in vehement denial, “we can't do that.”

“Niylah,” I said gently, “it's not my first choice either.”

“Isn't it?” She asked. “You forget, of all of us, I'm the one who saw you when you were living in these woods.”

I have to admit, she had a point there. It wasn't much of a stretch to describe me back then as having a death wish, so I tried a different tactic. “Be honest: what would happen if Ontari's followers knew she had killed me?”

Niylah chewed on her lower lip for a moment before she spoke. “It would be a massacre,” she admitted, letting out a long breath, “and nobody would ever dare challenge her for the throne. No army would dare stand against her. Her reign would last for decades if people believed she held your power.”

“It's my life weighed against that,” I told her. “That shouldn't be a hard choice to make.”

“Clarke…”

“Niylah,” I gently gripped her shoulders as I looked deeply into her eyes, “this is how it has to be. If the commander captures me, she's not bringing me back to her tent for a chat. At most, you'd be shortening my life span by a few hours, and you'd be saving countless lives, not only in this battle, but in the years to come. Whatever happens to me, I will _not_ be used as a trophy to empower her.”

“I won't kill you,” she insisted.

“Fine. Lexa will,” I nodded in the former commander's direction. I looked around the room. “Any other objections?”

I was met with silence.

“Okay, then,” I said, “here we go.”

* * *

The big advantage of being an army of four is that you can move way faster than an army of thousands. Even being careful not to be seen, we made first sight with the _Kongeda_ army less than fifty miles out of Polis. Marching a large army isn't a matter of pointing them in one direction and commanding them to start walking. Just getting that many people to start moving in the same direction is a logistical challenge in itself.

Meanwhile, the four of us were covering easily thirty miles a day. It was a push, to be sure, but with four people, carrying minimal gear, over terrain that three out of four of us knew very well, it was manageable. Even Lexa, who barely forty-eight hours ago had been in bed recovering from a gunshot wound, was able to keep up. Not that that came as much of a surprise to me. I'd seen her basically walk off stab wounds, slashing wounds to her limbs and an attack by a giant, angry gorilla.

It was with some mild surprise that I realized that Niylah and I knew these woods better than Lexa did. As commander of all grounder clans, and inheritor of all the knowledge and wisdom of the commanders that preceded her, I'd just assumed she must know everything about the land she surveyed. But she, and the commanders before her, were a warriors and leaders, whereas I'd hunted these woods for three months. For those three months, knowing every rock, tree, cave, valley and river had literally been a matter of life and death for me. I logged that little tidbit away for future use. Ontari may have had the wisdom of all the commanders in her head, but I had the homefield advantage.

I left the three others behind to track the advance scouts that Lexa assured me would be there. It was surprisingly easy to find and stalk them. There were four of them, but they were warriors, not hunters, so they weren't aiming for stealth, and assumed that any army that Pike would have at his disposal would be doing the same. As for me, silently stalking prey had been practically a way of life for those three months, and your typical cougar or bear was on much higher alert than these guys were. If they ever looked in my direction, the piles of skins and fabric that Niylah had piled on my body transformed me into a shapeless mass if I flattened myself on the ground next to a tree or boulder. From a distance, I looked like a mound of dirt, and if I stayed still, I looked like anything but a person or animal. I tracked them until their path became clear before I broke off to rejoin the others.

It took me about an hour to make my way back to them. They weren't far away, but I wanted to make sure that the scouts thought they hadn't been seen. That meant moving slowly and meticulously at least until I was far out of earshot.

“Are you ready to move out?” Murphy practically jumped when I spoke up behind him. Lexa, I'm pretty sure, already knew I was there.

“Do you have a route?” Lexa asked.

I nodded. “There's a pass a couple of miles from here. They're headed straight for it.” I knew it well. I'd tracked a bear into it a couple of months ago. The bottom of the valley was flat and wide, with tall granite mountains rising on either side. They were pock-marked with caves and crevices where we could hide and strike from, and with only four of us, it was unlikely that they'd spot any one of us. It made sense that Ontari would be heading for that one. The size of the army she was moving would have demanded it. Most of the others were narrower, making them that much more of a potential death trap for her warriors, the ones that were as wide or wider required her to go quite a ways out of her way. This particular pass allowed her a fairly direct march on Arkadia, and even if they were attacked, they would at least have some maneuvering room.

* * *

The sun was well passed the middle of the sky when we arrived at the mountain pass where we would make our stand. The floor of the valley was rocky, but covered in a loose gravel. The mountain walls on either side were steep, but not vertical. Enough for us to get the higher ground without exposing ourselves to enemy fire. It had a slight cant to the north which would hide the two of our people we put at the far end nicely. I scanned the rock faces on either side. I'd camped in the caves that dotted them on more than one occasion. They were deep enough to shelter me from the elements, they absorbed enough heat during the day that they radiated it back out nicely at night, and they were hard enough to access that it was unlikely that predators would happen by. In this case, that translated to “hard to see from the valley floor.”

I turned to Lexa. “How does this look?” I asked her.

She scanned the area alongside me before nodding her approval. “This will work,” she replied.

“Okay,” I announced, “let's get ready for a fight.”


	4. First Strike

“Shit,” I whispered. My eye widened behind the scope of the rifle as I took in the size of the army marching into the mountain pass. This was the first really good look I’d got at Ontari’s army, and I realized that Lexa had clearly undersold it. It was, as she’d predicted, a much larger force than she’d marched on Arkadia back when they’d been trying to force us to surrender Finn, but her words didn’t come close to doing it justice. I don’t think I’d ever fully appreciated the amount of restraint Lexa had showed before, perhaps because it didn’t seem that way at the time. But I now realized that she could easily have commanded this many people to march if she’d wanted to, and there would be no way that Arkadia could hold them off. An army that size could slaughter every living thing in the camp, and still have enough soldiers left over that they could grind the entire city down to the bedrock it lay on, just for shits and giggles. This was not a force sent to contain or intimidate. You only amass a force this size if you have the singular goal of exterminating an enemy.

I slid backwards a few inches and pulled a mottled gray blanket over myself, making sure that the objective lens of the rifle scope was covered. With the sun just under the south ridge of the valley, the chances that they would see a reflection off of it were remote, but I felt it was better safe than sorry. From my position high on the south wall of the valley, I quickly let my eyes trace over its opposite, where I knew Lexa held a similar post. Like me, and the others, she lay on the slope under a blanket that blended in almost perfectly with the granite wall behind her. From where I was sitting, my eyes scanned back and forth across the rock face. Even knowing approximately where she lay, I couldn’t find her. That was good, not that there was anything we could do about it if I could. None of us carried radios and there would be no way for me to warn her of her visibility if I did see her. The entire plan depended on them marching right past Lexa and I at the opening of the mountain pass without noticing us. If they spotted either one of us before the bulk of the army entered the pass, not only would the plan fail, but Lexa and I would almost certainly be very, very dead.

To her credit, Lexa had taken to riflery pretty well. She wasn’t a sharpshooter by any means, but long experience with archery and knife throwing had trained her eye well. She also had survived this long by training her mind and body to work almost as one, a skill critical for target shooting. She’d had a look of grim determination as we’d plotted our attack, and behind her green eyes, I knew she was reliving the deaths at TonDC. She wasn’t commander anymore, but these were still her people. People she’d led for years until I’d taken it from her. Now, she fully intended to fire upon them with every intention of killing some and wounding countless others.

I felt, as much as I heard or saw, the leading line of army pass by my tiny outpost. They didn’t march in unison, as one would expect of a well-organized militia, instead, although they advanced together, each warrior marched at their own pace. I couldn’t even make a reasonable guess as to how many there were. Thousands, definitely, but how many thousands was anyone’s guess, and I didn’t dare peek out from under cover to try to make a better guess. Not that it mattered much. We wouldn’t be any less dead going toe-to-toe against an army of one thousand than we would against an army of a million, but that wasn’t really the plan anyway. For our purposes, it was enough to slow them down. Our entire plan hinged on buying enough time for the rank and file grounders to realize that Ontari was not a suitable commander. It was about making sure that nobody was willing to stand between her and Lexa when the time came. Lexa had taken me aside to reiterate her concerns for the eventual face-off, but that was a problem for a later time. Now we had to make sure we all lived through the next forty-or-so minutes. After that, we could start figuring out how she was going to defeat the entire lineage of commanders, including herself, in single combat.

For now, the lynch-pin to the entire plan was Murphy. He would shoot first as the army approached the exit to the valley, then he and Niylah would systematically try to herd them back towards the entrance they came in through. The hard part was figuring out how to convince an entire army that a force of four was both much larger, and held a much better tactical position than they did. On that front, Lexa’s insight into the psychology of the commanders had been vital.

With no small amount of mental effort, I kept my breathing slow. I needed my eye keen and my hands steady. We would get exactly one shot at this, and it was going to happen fast. With an almost casual motion, I thumbed the selector on my rifle down two notches, setting it to fire bursts of three shots. It wouldn’t be long now.

Walled off by hard granite faces, the deep valley offered nearly perfect acoustics. From just a little less than mile away, I could hear the unmistakable report of a rifle, followed by a loud explosion. _Murphy_ , my brain reported automatically. I could almost feel the ripple of confusion run through the vast army that seemed practically close enough that I could reach out and touch them. A second explosion rang out, followed by the sound of a massive landslide.

Now it was my turn. Still under the blanket, I rose to a low crouch and took aim at the base of a small rock, a little lighter shade than the ones around it. Not enough that you would notice if you didn’t know it was there, but I’d placed it there specifically so I would have something to aim at. Almost simultaneous with my gentle squeeze of the trigger, a column of flame and debris rose upward, and a fraction of a second later, the sound and shockwave slammed into me. I ignored it, and swung my rifle a few degrees to the right and fired again. A second explosion rocked the valley and forced the trailing warriors in Ontari’s army forward. Behind me, I heard a second explosion echo up from the far end of the valley as I fired at a third and fourth. Finally, I swung up to the cliff face on which I was crouched, and aimed at the base of a large boulder. This explosion was larger, not designed to startle or herd the army, but to dislodge the massive boulder under which the bomb sat. I watched with some satisfaction as a rockslide was triggered, sending an avalanche of boulders both large and small towards the line of explosions I’d triggered only seconds before. It finally came to rest as a long pile, about six feet tall, stretching most of the way across the opening of the valley floor. Not enough to cut off their escape, but enough to make it harder. That had been Lexa’s addition to the plan. In her opinion, they needed to _feel_ trapped, without actually _being_ trapped. If they escaped, and that was the plan, it had to be hard enough that the army would pass up their survival as dumb luck rather than any skill or strategic acumen on the part of the Commander.

The irony that it was Pike who had taught us to build a broad range of improvised explosive devices was not lost on me. Somehow, though, I don’t think that this is quite what he’d had in mind when he’d covered it in Earth Skills. After all, we all expected the ground to be uninhabited when we were first sent down. Notwithstanding all that, though, there were countless survival situations where the judicious application of explosive force could be the difference between life and death. With some of the supplies Niylah had been able to trade from Mount Weather, it was actually pretty easy to prepare some reasonable, if unstable, pipe bombs that would detonate upon being hit by a high-velocity bullet, but probably wouldn’t detonate from having an army march over them. Probably. For all I knew at the time, we might have made the improvised equivalent of a land mine.

As I thumbed my rifle into fully automatic mode, I heard Lexa open fire on the army below. From behind me, I heard commotion rise as I heard two more rifles open up with fully automatic fire, as well as a new series of explosions. This was Murphy and Niylah trying to herd them back the way they’d come. We’d set up a line of improvised pipe bombs on either side of the valley, and they were detonating them one at a time, starting at the far end of the valley and moving towards Lexa and I. Below, I could see any sign of decorum in Ontari’s army disappear, and the scene descended into panic. As Lexa fired, I reached down below me and lit a small fuse. With any luck, it would set off a long line of small “poppers.” None of them were large enough to cause any damage at all, but in the valley, with a panicking army below, they would sound close enough to gunfire to produce the illusion that there was a line of gunmen extending from my position.

From her perch, Lexa was firing in long, s-shaped curves through the army below, stopping only to reload as she further fueled the panic that rose like a crescendo from below. I let my fully automatic fire join hers.

From below, I heard panicked cries of _Teik oso rowenes laud._ Sound the retreat. But sounding it almost seemed unnecessary. The army was already rushing back the way they came, frantically trying to climb over the barrier that had been left by the rockslide. A few had the presence of mind to fire their bows at the rock face that trapped them, but they were firing blind. They didn’t know how many shooters there were, or where they were hidden. All they knew was that whoever it was held the higher ground, had them pinned down, and had pulled off a perfect ambush. Realistically, their only option was to retreat and regroup.

For our part, we kept firing. If Niylah and Murphy were following the plan, they would be methodically working their way back up the valley, firing at the tail end of the army as it tried to make its escape. The plan was for them to shoot sloppy. Hit on occasion, but miss close if you can. Close enough that they would hear the ricochets of the bullets, and see where they hit. The goal was not to kill them, but to drive them. Keep them from having a chance to stop and collect their thoughts. Nevertheless, I knew, people were dying down there. Some were shot, others wounded. Others still were undoubtedly trampled by the panicked army trying to make good their escape. There was no way of knowing how many were injured or killed until the last of the thundering footsteps echoed to silence, and those who remained still lay motionless on the valley floor.

Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven who were dead or would be soon. Some of them might have a real shot at survival if we brought them back with us and treated them, but if we did that, they would know it wasn’t Pike and his men who did this. Instead, we had to leave them to die, never knowing who it was who killed them, and not knowing that they paid with their lives just to buy us a few extra days. Hundreds of warriors at the drop ship. More hundreds at Mount Weather. Now twenty-seven more lay dead in a desperation play to save lives.

“ _Yu gonplei ste odon,_ ” I muttered under my breath. At some stage, you just have to accept that the scales will never level. At this point, I had so many bodies piled upon one of the trays that nothing would ever set it right. All I could do was to make the best decisions I could, then hope that history would be more forgiving than I am.

* * *

I was the last to make it back to Niylah’s trading post. We’d each taken different routes back to reduce the chances that we would all get caught together. On top of that, I’d waited almost an hour on my outcropping just to make sure that they didn’t try to march again. As Lexa had predicted, they didn’t. It seemed very unlikely that they would try to march through this valley again. Even if Ontari ordered it, her warriors wouldn’t be eager to march into what had been a death trap only hours before. Or at least, that was the plan.

They had already doffed their gear by the time that I walked through the door. There was virtually no talking amongst them. Instead a sober silence hung over the trio. None seemed in the mood to celebrate. They all looked up in unison as they heard me enter. I’d been moving, in the dark, as fast as the terrain would allow, and I was exhausted.

Lexa was the first to rush forward, wrapping me in her arms before she helped me into the darkened back room. “ _Ste yu ait? Oso ste get yu daun. [Are you okay? We were worried.]_ ”

As I looked over her shoulder where Niylah looked decidedly uncomfortable, trying to look at pretty much everything but us, I gently untangled myself from her embrace. “I’m okay,” I replied, tiredly. I’m not going to lie: it was tempting to just let my body sag into her embrace, but things were already tense enough between me and Niylah, and I didn’t want to rub it in if I could avoid it.

I laid down my rifle next to the others and began shrugging out of my gear. I’d been running, hunched over for so long, it felt like my spine had a permanent kink in it. I took what seemed like my first full breath in almost 24 hours as I stretched and tried to ignore the ache in my tortured muscles.

“I stayed behind a little to see if they sent another scout into the valley,” I explained.

“Did they?” Lexa asked, clearly expecting the answer to be “no.”

I shook my head. “I could see the fires where they set up camp for the night, but they didn’t send anyone back to the valley.”

Lexa nodded, “come daybreak, Ontari will send scouts to search the woods for Pike’s men, and to look for an alternate path through the mountains. It is unlikely that she will try the same mountain pass again.”

“So, at least another day before she starts marching again?” I summarized.

Lexa nodded, “perhaps slightly more. And none of the remaining mountain passes offer as direct a path to Arkadia.”

“Good,” I nodded my approval, “that gives us some time to start a ground game against Pike.”

“I will lay out some bows and blades,” Niylah replied. “For now, we should rest.”

I nodded my agreement. “Get some sleep, everyone. We have a busy day tomorrow.”

“ _Wanheda_? May I speak with you a moment?” I winced. It wasn’t often that Lexa used my title when addressing me directly. She knew I wasn’t fond of it, or what I’d done to earn it. The only times she seemed to use it in my presence were when she was introducing me to another party, or when she had something serious she wanted to talk about. I glanced over her shoulder at Niylah and Murphy and gave a short nod to them. They disappeared into the next room to offer us a measure of privacy.

I watched the doorway where they’d disappeared for a moment before I shifted my eyes over to Lexa’s. “ _Heda_ ,” I addressed her.

She shook her head, “not anymore. But you are still _Wanheda_ , with all that entails. You are valuable to the Commander. In many ways, more valuable to her than I am.”

“We’ve been over this,” I dismissed her comment with a wave of my hand.

“But you clearly didn’t listen,” she countered. “What if you’d been captured, alone?” She demanded.

“Then I’d be dead,” I replied.

“You don’t understand, _Wanheda_ ,” she emphasized my title again. “It is not your death that is the concern: it’s who kills you. Your body presented to her is worthless. Your life presented to her is priceless. If you had been captured today, who would have killed you?”

I nodded, defeated. “Probably Ontari. You’re right.”

“And what would happen if Ontari’s army came to believe that Pike held the power of _Wanheda_?” She pressed.

That, I have to admit, was an angle I hadn’t considered. But she was right, again. For a moment I had the image in my mind of Pike standing in full view of Ontari’s army, and executing me before their eyes just so they’d know that he’d done it. To be honest, I didn’t know if that alone would motivate Ontari’s army to lay down their arms, but I had little doubt that Pike would try it if he thought it could.

Sensing my thoughts, she rested her hands on my shoulders and crouched down slightly to look in my eyes. “I don’t know how to explain to you how valuable you are to m— to us, _Klark_. You must live, or you must die at our hand. You cannot die at theirs.”

“I don’t know how much control we can expect to have over that,” I said, conceding her point.

“I do. From here forward, you cannot leave my presence. I swear to you _Klark kom skaikru_ , that you will not be captured alive,” her voice took on a serious tone.

From just about anyone else, that would have sounded vaguely threatening. From Lexa, it was probably the closest thing you could expect to a marriage proposal. To be completely honest, I wasn’t entirely certain what the appropriate response was. _Thank you_ didn’t seem quite right for someone who had literally just promised to kill me, especially when it was a pretty safe bet that she’d have to make good on that promise sooner or later. Finally, I spoke up again, “a few days ago, I almost lost you. Now, you’ve promised to let me go, if you have to. I know how hard a promise that is for you to make, and I thank you.”

Lexa nodded.

“When this fight is over, we owe each other a conversation about the future,” I told her. I took a small step backwards. Not far enough to make her hands, still on my shoulders, release me, but enough to create a small space between us. “For now, though, Niylah is right. We should rest.”

Lexa let her hands drop to her sides and took a step backwards, mirroring my earlier action. She offered a respectful nod, “sleep well _Klark kom Skaikru_. I will wake you in the morning.”

I mirrored her nod, “sleep well,” I answered, “ _oso gonplei nou ste odon._ ”


	5. Homecoming

It was hard to think of Arkadia as home anymore. It’s weird to say that about the home of your only remaining family, your closest friends, and your most intimate confidants. It’s odd to say that of a place where people you’d committed genocide to save were living. I’d been back exactly once in the last four months, and even then, I barely stayed for an hour before I’d had to escape again. But, truth be known, I wouldn’t have stayed long even if it were an option. None of the reasons that I’d left in the first place had changed, and as a result, there wasn’t much drawing me back. Polis felt like home. The forest between them felt like home. Niylah’s outpost felt like home. Arkadia didn’t. It only barely felt that way when I first made it back there with Anya – God it felt like that was ages ago – and it definitely didn’t feel that way with Pike in charge.

“Are you okay?” Niylah’s voice broke into my reverie.

I nodded. “I just thought that coming back to Arkadia would feel more like…” I let my words trail off.

“Like coming home,” she finished for me.

“Yeah,” I said. As close as we’d been, Niylah could do a pretty decent job of reading my mind.

“ _Yu gon we suna [you’ve been away a long time],_ ” she said.

“ _No, taim swich ai op [no, the time changed me],”_ I replied.

I glanced over at Lexa, who was seated on a stump a few feet away. She wore a thin mask across her nose and mouth just in case we ran into someone who could recognize her. She’d also changed her war paint, so that even seen unmasked, she’d be hard to recognize. Few people outside her most intimate circle were fortunate enough to see her face unpainted, but the bird’s wing motif she always painted over her eyes was both unique and readily recognized. She’d replaced it with a quartet of vertical bars that slashed down across each of her eyes to curve under her jawline. If nobody looked too closely, it would probably fool a solid majority of those grounders who had never been in the same room with her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Niylah look over at me, then quickly look back, hoping that I wouldn’t notice. “She was worried about you,” she said, “when you did not return. She was worried.”

“Worried about _Wanheda_ , you mean,” I replied.

“No, I don’t,” Niylah replied. “I know what it is to be worried for you, _Klark_. I know the difference.”

I looked over at her, with some sympathy. This couldn’t have been easy for her. She pretended not to notice when Lexa and I were together, and she did a good job of hiding her discomfort when she saw the two of us alone, but she was hurting, and I was the one who had hurt her.

We’d been watching the village for almost six hours at this point. In that time, Pike had sent two patrols out into the surrounding woods. One of the two had returned, the other was still running a circuit. They were on foot, for the moment, so it was unlikely that they’d cross what they thought was a 5-mile buffer zone. They were keeping it close to the camp, creating their own buffer zone, as it were. Sooner or later, though, Pike would push out farther. He’d either try to break the enemy lines, or he’d attack some Grounder village, assuming he hadn’t done that already.

We’d decided not to ambush a patrol until we knew that they were going to break the 5-mile buffer zone. For the moment, anyway, it was critical that they thought they had some free movement within that buffer. They had to believe that Lexa— that Ontari was honoring her end.

I froze at my mis-thought. “Shit,” I whispered.

“What?” Niylah asked.

“How did you find out that Lexa was dead?” I asked her.

“A messenger arrived a little before you did,” Niylah replied. “He announced that a conclave had been convened.”

“Lexa,” I called her over. She stood from her stump and walked over to join us.

“Yes?” She asked as she sat next to me.

“When a conclave is announced, how do they pass that news to the different clans and villages?” I asked. “I mean, exactly what do you do?”

“A number of messengers are sent to all the major clans. From the major villages in each clan, they organize additional messengers to the surrounding villages. If needed, the _fleimkepa_ organizes a search in all of the clans for any _natblida_.” She summarized.

“What about _Skaikru_? They have no nightbloods, and by the time a conclave had been called, they were blockaded. Would a messenger be sent to them?” I asked.

Lexa shook her head, and her brow furrowed. “No. What are you thinking?”

“They don’t know,” I breathed, the realization felt like a punch in the chest, and I felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. “They don’t know you’re dead, and there’s another commander in charge. As far as they know, you’re still _heda_.”

“Why would Pike care about that, even if he did know?” Niylah asked.

“He wouldn’t, but the Lincoln and the other grounder warriors that he has imprisoned might,” I countered. “They don’t know either. How would they? Even if Pike had a messenger coming to him, which according to you, he didn’t, he isn’t exactly about to let his prisoners have mail call,” I told her. “If we free them, they will follow you.”

“How would we do that?” She asked.

“I don’t know, _yet_ ,” I admitted, “but if we can get you in front of them, have you breathe in and out for them a few times, and free them, will they follow you fighting their way out?”

“You’re asking me to lie to my own people,” Lexa pointed out.

“Yes. And maybe even ask them to die for you based on that lie,” I told her. “Will they do it?”

Lexa chewed uncomfortably on her lower lip before she nodded silently.

“Okay, that changes things,” I inwardly cursed myself again for not realizing it sooner. There was a lot of that going around. On the ark, communication was practically instantaneous, the people who needed to have information could get it within seconds. Here, it could take hours to weeks for word to spread out, and even then some people who might need that information wouldn’t ever hear it. I had somehow thought that all the grounders, no matter where they were, would just magically know that Lexa had been replaced. Pike had built his own Trojan horse, and the Greek warriors inside didn’t even realize it yet. “It’s what we tried – what we would have tried to do at Mount Weather,” I told her.

“It is a good plan,” Lexa intruded on my thoughts, “if incomplete at the moment.” She offered a one-sided smile.

I turned to Niylah. “Thank you,” I told her.

She frowned, confused. “What did I do?”

“You make it easier to think,” I told her, “easier to clear my thoughts.”

She reached to take my hand almost without thinking before she glanced over at Lexa and stopped herself. Instead, she stood, her fingertips tracing the length of my forearm as she stepped back from me. “I will join Murphy in watching Arkadia,” she announced. It was a painfully transparent excuse to get away, and I winced as she turned to leave. I watched the tree behind which she disappeared for a moment before I finally looked over at Lexa.

Lexa took one of the four throwing knives she had sheathed along either side of her torso and gently checked the edge. Satisfied at its sharpness, she unsheathed one of the two long swords that crisscrossed her back and similarly tested it for a moment. She’d opted not to carry a bow for the attacks on _Skaikru_. I’d seen the force and accuracy with which she could throw a knife, and it was hard to argue against the decision.

“You care for her,” she said, finally. It wasn’t an accusation, or even a question. It was an observation. A pure statement of fact. It was as if she was pointing out that it looked like it could rain later. “And she,” she added, “cares for you.”

I looked over to where Niylah had just stepped out of sight before I met her eyes again and offered her a wry smile. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

“The ability to read body language has saved my life more than once,” she replied.

That was certainly true. As commander she spent pretty much every waking moment of her life living with the possibility that a trusted advisor or ambassador could try to kill her at any moment. The ability to know when someone could attack her unexpectedly had undoubtedly saved her life on many occasions.

I took a moment to formulate my answer before I spoke again. “It’s not what you think,” I said finally.

Lexa gave a gentle nod for me to continue.

“After I…” I stopped and rephrased, “after Mount Weather,” Lexa’s expression darkened at the mention, but she did not interrupt, “I ran away. If you’d asked me then, I would have told you that I didn’t plan to return, ever. I understand that even my own mother had practically given up on finding me, saying that I would only be found if I wanted to be, and I can tell you now that I didn’t want to be found. If you hadn’t sent Roan out to collect me, I would either still be out there,” I glanced around the woods, absorbing their familiarity for a moment before I corrected myself “out _here_ , or more likely, one of the bounty hunters that _Azgeda_ sent after me would have gotten lucky.” I paused, collecting my thoughts.

Lexa gently gestured for me to go on. Her expression was soft. Neither jealous nor accusatory, it merely encouraged me to continue speaking.

“For three months, when I heard anyone approaching, I went the other way. The occasional hunter entered my hunting grounds, but I gave them a wide berth. I watched high in a tree on more than one occasion as search parties from _Skaikru_ tried to find me. Bellamy and the rest are smart, but it seems like never once did they think of looking up.” I smiled at a memory, “they once stopped for lunch thirty feet directly below the branch I was resting on. All I needed to do to go home was to let them know I was there. It wouldn’t have taken much, either. Barely more than a whisper, and I’d be sleeping in my own bed by nightfall. Instead I sat in complete silence for twenty minutes and watched them eat before they all piled back into the rover and drove away, without even once feeling the slightest temptation to speak up. For three months, I did everything I could to avoid any human contact. Even from people I knew and loved.”

“I’m not sure that I understand,” Lexa prodded gently.

“She,” I nodded to where Niylah had disappeared, “was the only exception. I needed to trade for supplies, so I couldn’t completely cut myself off from anyone else, but hers was the only trading post I went to, and even _then_ I’d watch and wait until I knew she was alone before I went in.”

“So you became close,” Lexa realized.

“Not exactly,” I paused, “I mean, yes, but it was more than that. It wasn’t just that she was the only person I had any contact with. She knew who I was, and she protected me, even when I didn’t even know I needed protection. When I knew her, I didn’t know I was _Wanheda_. I didn’t know that _Azgeda_ had a bounty on my head. I didn’t know that you were searching for me, and I didn’t know that I had somehow become a pawn in high-stakes grounder politics. It would have been easy for her to hand me over to any one of what must have been countless bounty hunters that stopped by her little outpost. But she didn’t. Instead, she was a friend when I didn’t think I deserved one, a sounding board when I didn’t think I wanted one, a nurse and caregiver when I didn’t care if I was healed,” I paused, uncomfortably, before I decided that Lexa didn’t deserve a lie, “and a lover when I thought I shouldn’t have one. And apart from all that, she was family when she knew I’d abandoned mine. It’s how I knew I could trust her when you – when _we_ needed a place to hide.”

“And how did you feel about her?” Lexa asked.

This answer came a little more easily, “when I was with her, for just a second, I wasn’t the mountain killer anymore. I wasn’t holding the weight of the hundreds of people at Mount Weather that I’d had to kill to get my own people back. I wasn’t seeing the faces of the men, women and children who had trusted and helped me as the radiation burned them all. I wasn’t seeing Finn’s face as he bled out because I couldn’t watch him tortured to death, or hearing Raven’s scream as she realized what I’d done. I wasn’t seeing the faces of the hundreds of people that I abandoned to be blown up at TonDC, and I wasn’t seeing the faces of the three hundred of your warriors I ordered burned to death at the drop ship. She was what I needed, and although I never asked, I think she knew how desperately I needed it.”

“ _Dula yu op hod em in_?” She asked.

There wasn’t even the tiniest hint of jealousy in her question, and it shouldn’t have surprised me that that was what she really wanted to know. I pursed my lips as I looked over where Niylah had disappeared for a moment. It was a question Lexa deserved to have answered, but if I’m being honest, I wasn’t exactly sure what a truthful answer was. My feelings for Niylah were… complicated, to say the least. There was no doubt that Niylah held a special place in my heart. And there was no way I could deny that I felt a bond with her that I could describe as _loving_. After some thought, I finally spoke, “not in the way you mean, but Niylah was – _is_ – very special to me. For what she was and what she did for me, yes, I will always love her.”

Lexa nodded, accepting my answer for the truth that it was. She followed my gaze to where Niylah had been a few moments before. It was nearly a full minute before she spoke again. “I am glad you had someone to help you heal,” she said, finally, “I only wish that I hadn’t been the reason why you needed it.”

“Don’t,” I shook my head, “you did what was right for your people.” This was a sore point, and to be honest, I was tired of retreading the same ground.

“You are my people,” Lexa told me. “I did not realize it then. I should have.”

I reached to clasp her hand with my own. It occurred to me that in a very real sense, we’d had a way out. Back when we first arrived at Niyla’s outpost, we could have disappeared. We could have vanished into the woods forever and nobody would have found us. Hell, there was probably a time when Lexa would have suggested it. The fact that she hadn’t suggested it, nor, to my ability to determine had she even considered it said a lot about how much the last months had changed her. I remembered how we’d both expressed a longing for a time when we would no longer owe anything to our people. Now that dream seemed more unreachable than ever.

* * *

I looked down at the front gate of Arkadia. I’d removed the scope from the rifle I’d used a few days earlier. It wasn’t a telescope, exactly, but it allowed me a better look at the camp than the naked eye.

“What do you see?” Lexa asked.

“They’re staging another patrol,” I told her.

“So why are you smiling?” She asked.

“They’re loading the Rover,” I replied. “Wait’s over. They’re going to try to run the blockade.”


End file.
